Unbundle- Facebook’s Mobile Strategy

Jan.
30th
2014

Today Facebook announced that on February 3rd it will be launching Paper, a standalone news reading app. Facebook’s initial mobile strategy was to build every feature possible into the core mobile app, that led to an app that was confusing, slow, and prone to frequent crashes. The bigger threat was that other companies could focus on a single feature, nail the experience, and begin to take some of the attention of Facebook’s audience. Facebook eventually reacted by purchasing Instagram, and then releasing Messenger- the standalone messaging app. The Facebook mobile experience simply didn’t work, it tried to do too much. Unbundling the Facebook experience into individual apps is a brilliant strategy, and maybe the only one that would work for Facebook. With the announcement of Paper, and the introduction of Facebook Creative Labs, it is only natural to begin thinking about what other standalone apps Facebook will release in the future. My first guess is the calendar/events experience will be reimagined for mobile, and released as a standalone app, rather than continue to buried inside the core FB mobile app. The rapid rise of mobile was disruptive to Facebook, which was a service primarily experienced on a personal computer. The social networking giant was left with no other option but to disrupt itself, or risk becoming an afterthought in the Post-PC era. I’m curious to see how much real estate on my phone Facebook will make a grab for in the near future.